RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives to improve performance, increase storage capacity, or provide redundancy. There are several RAID levels, each offering different benefits depending on your needs.
- RAID 0 (Striping): Distributes data across multiple disks to improve performance. However, it offers no redundancy; if one disk fails, all data is lost.
- RAID 1 (Mirroring): Duplicates data across two or more disks. This provides redundancy, as the data can be recovered from the mirrored disk if one fails, but there is no performance gain.
- RAID 5 (Striping with Parity): Distributes data and parity information across three or more disks. It provides a good balance between performance, redundancy, and storage efficiency.
- RAID 6 (Striping with Double Parity): Similar to RAID 5 but with two parity blocks, allowing for the failure of two disks without data loss.
- RAID 10 (RAID 1+0): Combines RAID 0 and RAID 1, offering both improved performance and redundancy by striping data across mirrored disks.